Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology

This is the journal of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU), presenting UFO and paranormal cases from Spain, South America and the Caribbean

Monday, January 30, 2012

Mexico: More on the Mexicali UFO Chase

A few weeks Ana Luisa Cid advised us of the chase involving several police units in the city of Mexicali, Baja California. She has posted a video of a segment of the La Sobremesa program (dated 26 Jan 2012)in which she interviews journalist Juan Galván of the La Voz de la Frontera newspaper.

The La Sobremesa segment can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcKMbi0pc8k

Prof. Cid has sent us two photos - one is from the C4 camera system depicting the object that was seen over the airport; the other shows journalist Galván interviewing Officer Ruelas.

Argentina: UFO Wave Ongoing in the Western Corridor

Initially unnoticed, a photograph depicting four luminous dots in the skies over Moreno prompted action once again by researchers of the UFO phenomenon, involving the repeated manifestations of unidentified flying objects of unknown origin in the so-called "Western Corridor", where residents from a variety of locations in the outlying districts have reported and recorded said manifestations.

Fabian Torti, director of the Grupo Tecnico de Asistencia Psicologica OVNI (GRUTAP) told DIARIO POPULAR that for over seven months since the subject became a fixture after a series of cases in Ituzaingó, "phenomena have repeated themselves" with sightings of mysterious flying objects that his group in no way definitively classifies as extraterrestrial presences.

In this regard, Torti noted that the phenomenon also brought about a massive influx of eyewitness accounts and stories involving sightings and unique events related to these manfistations, everything ranging from "the disappearance of animals to abductions", subjects that GRUTAP places under scrutiny "given the application of psychological criteria with which to study such cases."

One of the manifestations received by the agency these days was a photo taken by social psychologist Gabriela Almirón, a member of the Group, who took a sequence of photos from the locality of Moreno. She was not aware until much later, however, that one of the images presented four points with a luminous appearance. One of them was shaped like a delta wing and another resembled an inverted "T".

According to Torti, Almirón has been a member of GRUTAP for ten years and while she is involved with studying eyewitness cases from a psychological standpoint, "[she] never imagined that she would capture such an image". As to the numerous cases recorded in the corridor, he states that "if only two out of ten cases cannot be explained, then that two per cent indicates something."

Neglected Lights: Mexico's 1970s Saucer Wave

Neglected Lights: Mexico’s 1970 Saucer WaveBy Scott Corrales (c) 2012

Perhaps there were far better things to do in 1970 than look at the sky. After all, Man had already been to the Moon twice – to the elation of billions – but the near-loss of Apollo 13 tempered the excitement with a reminder that space was the ultimate hostile environment. There were more pressing situations to be addressed on Earth, and particularly at the street level, as student uprisings in the Western nations alternated with free festivals, singing songs with a decidedly political descant to them.

Mexico entered the new decade reeling from the brutal suppression of activism at Tlatelolco in 1968 – weeks before the Olympic Games slated for that year – and a government in transition. The same upheaval in music, politics and consciousness was to be found there, and in such a state of affairs, no one was surprised that “los marcianos” – the Martians, everyday parlance for the concept of “space aliens” – had taken an interest in terrestrial matters, whether to lend a hand or laugh at foolish humanity.

The intense UFO activity of the mid-to-late Sixties carried into this new decade as well, with the generalized belief that human space activity had attracted the notice of space-faring civilizations, perhaps unmindful of the fact that the same had been said about nuclear activity in the ‘50s. Were these putative aliens worried that the noisy neighbors with their atomic firecrackers now threatened to bring disturbance to their worlds?

While these and other affairs entertained the thoughts of people in the big cities, UFO activity was taking place far from the sodium lamps, the urban sprawl and the nightlife.

On 18 February 1971, frantic calls from local residents were received at the newsroom at the “El Siglo” newspaper in the northern Mexican city of Torreón. At 22:00 hours a “flying saucer” had become visible to the southwest of the city, appearing at first as a bright spot in the skies and later increasing in size, changing color from yellow to pink and leaving a wake that remained in the sky for several minutes before the intruder vanished.

The newspaper sent out reporters to interview the witnesses, and while most agreed on what they had seen, they were equally certain that they had not seen a meteorite, bolide or anything similar, as these did not initially appear to be small, then larger, and leave luminous wakes that remained for several minutes.

To the south of Torreón and on the same day – 18 February 1971 – residents of the Charcas region of San Luis Potosí also advised the local authorities that a platillo volador had flown over the mining facilities that have made the state a major source of ores since colonial times. Local peasants said that the object flew at fantastic speeds, slowing down only to circle some of the mountaintops. The UFOs speed and intense white glow made it impossible for viewers to make out details. According to a wire from the AEE news agency, “hundreds of people poured out of their homes to view the strange phenomenon.”

Journalist and UFO researcher Santiago García interviewed Andrés Barraza, a mechanic who had been among the witnesses of a significant sighting on 29 January 1971. Barraza said that objects involved in the multiple object sighting “had a strange glow to them, and their speed was around 200 kilometers an hour.” When asked how he could be so sure of their speed, he replied that as a mechanic, he was a keen observer of the speeds of a car or any object in motion.

García would go on to acquire a measure of renown for his investigations of the “Zone of Silence” near the town of Ceballos, Durango, and eventually had sightings of his own in this largely inhospitable region. In November 1972, while looking into other UFO cases in northern Mexico, he boarded a rickety rural bus to reach the village of Jimulco in the state of Coahuila.

The driver obligingly dropped the journalist off at the roadside patch that he wanted to investigate (an alleged landing site) and García set off across the rocky desert terrain. “I hadn’t quite covered two hundred meters,” he wrote, “when three luminous disks measuring five meters in diameter emerged from behind a stand of trees. The objects appeared to spin on their own axises, all the while emitting very high-pitched sounds.”

The three unknown devices may have been as startled by the human’s appearance as he was by theirs. They rose vertically to a height and then flew off from the outskirts of Jimulco at what García describes as “frightening” rate of speed, which he placed at four hundred kilometers an hour. What he found most astonishing from this encounter with the unknown had nothing to do with the objects, but rather with the fact that he had forgotten to bring along his camera, “my inseparable companion in research,” as he described it. Fearing that people would choose not to believe him if the told his story, he later discovered that there had been other witness to the trio of unknown objects.

As it turned out, elections were in full swing for the office of the mayor of Jimulco, and a delegation of politicians and advisers, including the candidate for office, the state governor and other grandees, had seen the phenomenon from their campaign bus. Pedro Rojas, a county official, was part of the delegation and later told García that the politicians had all seen the three objects. Rojas himself had never paid much attention to the UFO phenomenon, but the sighting on 16 November 1972 certainly stirred his interest.

Anomalous activity would spread to the neighboring state of Chihuahua – Mexico’s largest – in the months following the events in Coahuila. On 15 August 1973, the Heraldo de la Tarde newspaper featured a UFO report received from Rogelio Yapor, an employee with the social security office in Ciudad Cuahutémoc. Mr. Yapor was driving along the road toward Ciudad Cuauhtémoc with his family when he noticed a very large luminous object (with estimated diameter of fifty meters – in excess of 160 feet) hovering not too high up in the sky.

Yapor described the object as a “flying saucer” that appeared to play a game of hide-and-seek among the clouds, descending and rising abruptly with “the same speed as a jet.” These maneuvers persisted for an estimated forty-five minutes – the time it took for the witness to cover the forty kilometer distance to his destination. “Suddenly, the saucer took off at an amazing speed toward the mountains, becoming the size of a star and then vanishing altogether.”

The staff at the Heraldo de la Tarde’s newsroom would have probably dismissed it as otra de marcianos – just another Martian story – but the fact that Yapor had placed a very expensive long distance call to their office made them suspect that the eyewitness was telling the truth.

The sightings showed no signs of abating, as reports now emerged from the city of Monterrey. On 7 September 1973, the El Norte de Monterrey noted that many citizens were phoning in reports of strange objects, unsure of their terrestrial or extraterrestrial provenance. “Some speak of such phenomena, seemingly strange, as merely objects produced by Man, and which only appear strange when seen in the dark. Others speak of UFOs.”

Antonio Cantú was among these witnesses. From his home in the El Roble district, he was able to see a luminous object hanging motionless over the peaks of Cerro de las Mitras, an impressive geological formation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_de_las_Mitras). The object would remain suspended over the mountain before shooting off at high speed – and immediately after, the air in his neighborhood would become filled with fog or fumes that were attributed to the unknown device’s takeoff or landing.

Fortunately, Mr. Cantú was not alone in his statements. From another residential district – Colonia San José – Mr. José Lara had also seen a strange object land on the summit of Cerro de las Mitras in the evening. “It was a bright object, emitting a very powerful beam of light, remaining motionless until it set off at considerable speed.” Other witnesses reported in person to the newsroom of El Norte to inform the staff of the anomalous events playing out on the summit.

Alberto Taboada, driving at night along the road linking Monterrey with Laredo, Texas, was near the town of Sabinas Hidalgo when his car became awash in an intense, unearthly light. Rather than pulling over, he continued his journey into Sabinas, reaching a filling station owned by Mario Ancira. Both men were able to share the sighting of numerous objects flying in a north to south direction, heading to Monterrey. Of further interest is the fact that both men observed the objects “falling to the ground” after covering a certain distance. Taboada continued his journey, and was able to see objects falling the vicinity of Cerro Mamulique.

The reader will allow me a personal note: Due to visa restrictions applicable to U.S. citizens living in Mexico at the time, my family had to make a twice-yearly journey to Laredo, Texas to get our visas stamped on the U.S. side in order to remain within the Mexico. The seventeen-hour journey was always in the dark, and afforded spectacular views of the countryside and night skies over the desert. The eerie quality of this nocturnal landscape – especially when the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere to pick up or drop off passengers – was never more intense than around El Mamulique. While I never saw any of these lights at the time, I did get to see a reddish-violet bolt of dry lightning vaporize a tree in the distance. A photo of the area as it appears today can be seen at http://img25.echo.cx/img25/3853/1272788img5oo.jpg

The lights in the sky were not always inclined to play nice, to judge by some of the journalistic reports available from the time.

In May 1973, Manuel Ruelas and Martín Antonio Luque from the vicinity of El Aguajito in the state of Sinaloa, were chased by a “flying saucer” as they made their way at three o’clock in the morning on a mule-drawn wagon, returning from a fish market. Upon reaching a wilderness known as El Vallado, both men saw a flying object hurtling toward them out of the darkness, casting an intense yellow glow that lit up an area greater than two meters around it. According to their story, the object approached them to the point that they were completely engulfed in its light, flying away and then returning to continue its game. Ruelas and Luque lost their nerve and jumped out of the wagon, running into the brush and abandoning their cargo of fish – and the mule -- to its fate.

Vidal Cota, a magistrate from the town of Higuera de Zaragoza, reported to the scene of the UFO “harassment” and found the tracks left by the two peasants as they ran for cover, and fish that had fallen to the ground after they fled. No word on the mule, though.

Although no date is given for the next and most impressive events, it was featured in the El Sol de Sinaloa newspaper and occurred with days of the May 9, 1973 event involving the peasants and the cartload of fish. Aaron Irizar, 22 at the time, was a business major at the Universtity of Sinaloa who had experienced an encounter with the unknown while in the company of a friend. His story was given short shrift at first, due to his age, his status as a college student, and the chance that he might have been smoking drugs.

Irizar’s story involved a sighting of a disk-shaped UFO at approximately nine o’clock in the evening on a Sunday night, specifically near the intersection of Rosales and Xicotencatll streets in Las Quintas. The student added that a varied number of people – men and women of all ages, even children – had seen the arrival of a brilliant light, flying as low as three hundred meters in the air. “You’ll surely think I’m crazy, but I saw it. It was a flying saucer. Well, like the kind one sees drawn in the comic books. It was oval with a bright red dome and a squarish box underneath it.”

The glowing visitor hovered over the crowd for a few minutes before vanishing altogether. Irizar added that the warm evening became even hotter when the object stopped over the assembled crowd. “I cannot describe the emotions I felt, “ he said. “I was stunned, and was even frightened when I saw some of the women kneeling in the middle of street, saying that it was the end of the world. I also saw a child pass out on account of the panic and a young man become hysterical.”

Five residents of the city of San Luis Potosí witnessed the maneuvers of an orange-red UFO flying over the city late at night in January 1975. Their description of this phenomenon characterizes the physical description given of most UFOs seen over this part of the country: the object resembled a ball, giving off an intense shine that resembled fire, as if the object were ablaze.

Two such fireballs were seen by Jesús Aguiar in Baja California: while the young shepherd looked after some burros on a ranch called El Guayabo, he noticed two fiery-red balls heading toward him nearly at tree-top level, maneuvering as if to avoid hitting the trees. Aguiar added that an intense burning smell filled the air after the objects went past him.

On February 29, 1976 a family on its way to inspect a recent snowfall (a rare occurrence in Mexico due to the high elevations) at a location close to the community of El Chico in the state of Hidalgo. Parking their car by the roadside, the group entered the woods, heading toward an area used for picnics in warmer weather. At around 8:30 a.m., one of the children shouted that a strange object was suspended in mid-air. Having brought along photographic equipment to take snapshots of the elusive snow, the boy's father swung his camera heavenward to take an impressive sequence of photographs, just as the saucer-shaped craft began to exhibit the classic "swinging" motion that has characterized these vehicles. The photographs remain one of the most important documents ever collected on the UFO phenomenon. Activity of this nature has always been common in this part of Mexico, perhaps owing to the fact that a number of large active mining endeavors in the region. The connection between UFOs and mines has also been observed in Puerto Rico, where the test pits dug for copper near the town of Adjuntas attract their interest.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Mexico: Police Engage in UFO Chase

"A UFO with white lights, blue and yellow flashes" -- The first report was received from the airport area, and [the object] was even seen by C-4 operators manning the safety cameras that appear to have recorded it. The sighting prompted the mobilization of police officials. Martin Ruelas, supervisor of the western sector, was able to see it with his own eyes, but it was too fast and it was impossible to follow.

An Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) prompted an intense mobilization by elements of the Public Safety Forces of the City of Mexicali, arising from citizen reports about the presence of a strange device in the air.

Alejandro Monreal Noriega, general commander of Patrols in the Dirección de Seguridad Pública Municipal (DSPM) reported that the first news item was received from people living in the vicinity of the airport.

Even C-4 operators, responsible for urban security cameras, saw the object in their systems and it appears to have been recorded. Furthermore, hundreds of phone calls were received at the "066" number, reporting the flying object's presence.

It was seen around the airport and subsequently flying at dizzying speeds toward the new guard post after citizens reported seeing it over the Marán Industrial Park, and subsequently in the Rivera Campestre district and related areas.

Martin Ruelas, supervisor of the DSPM's western region, saw it and stated that it was a sizeable round white object with visible blue and yellow flashes. He added that the object was seen high in the sky and moved up, down and sideways at very high speeds, vanishing from sight after heading south from the valley of Mexicali.

Deputy Commander Medina, from the valley's southern area, also saw it and said it was too fast and impossible to follow, as it changed direction suddenly.

A "chase" by patrolmen ensued, but since the object changed position within seconds, they simply relayed its location in order to have the nearest unit continue the report. Unfortunately, it was impossible to obtain an answer.

Monreal Noriega stated that consultations were made with airport authorities and SEDENA, as well as their U.S. counterparts, and they awaited more information on the subject.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

High Strangeness: Forgotten Humanoid Encounters

In the fall of 1996 I began work on my second book, Flashpoint: High Strangeness in Puerto Rico, not realizing that many cases from the 1960s and 1970s se habían quedado en el tintero, as is said in Spanish, “left behind in the inkwell”. Some of these journalistic accounts appeared in magazines that have been out of print for generations; others were interviews on radio and television broadcasts that came to my attention years after Flashpoint finally appeared in print (1998).

Most of these cases involved a feature that isn’t present in contemporary cases anymore – eyewitness reports of humanoids (and not so humanoid) entities. Other authors have given much thought to the reasons why “occupant” cases have dwindled, or simply vanished altogether. In the second decade of the 21st century, much fuss is made of lights in the sky, the so-called “blurfos” and possibly hoaxed videos employing commercially available software packages. During the Year of the Humanoids (1973) such CE-Is would’ve been relegated to the back burner, or overlooked altogether.

But on to the cases.

The most intriguing of these goes back to the year 1973 – during the “Year of the Humanoids” – and it involves an anonymous truck driver from the city of Arecibo on Puerto Rico’s northern shore. Researcher Sebastián Robiou interviewed this unidentified witness in January 1974, so the details were still fresh in the experiencer’s mind.

The driver was on his way from San Juan to Arecibo, accompanied by an assistant, to make a routine delivery at a warehouse. At one point along Route 2, the old “military road” that links the cities of the northern coastline with Mayaguez on the west and Ponce on the south, the driver noticed a “weird star” larger than any of the planets. This unusual source of light appeared to be following his truck.

At 0400, the truck arrived at the warehouse behind the Arecibo Shopping Center, which was deserted at the time. Both men decided to unload the delivery truck themselves and sleep for a few hours before undertaking the trip back to San Juan. Just as they were drifting off to sleep, they heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and fearful of robbers, they inspected the surroundings before returning to their truck and finally getting much needed rest. Some time went by and the driver heard the footsteps again: he alerted his companion, who did not wake up this time. The driver decided to feign sleep and remained alert.

His watchfulness paid off, and to his amazement, he saw three “whitish figures” – according to the description given to Robiou – visible in the side view mirror on the passenger side. In his mind, he expected a confrontation with common criminals, not a brush with the unknown.

Still feigning sleep, he was able to see three strange beings peering into his truck through the passenger window, past his sleeping companion. This was the verbatim description of the incident: “They were identical to each other. They had close-fitting helmets on their heads, and a sort of crest projected from the front to the back. The beings were white in color, and normal but for a major detail – their noses were hooked like a parrot’s beak!”

One may wonder how the driver managed to remain calm in the face of this strange visitation. But the fact is that he remained still, looking at the unknown visitors through slitted eyes, and describing their behavior. The humanoids spoke to each other with a sound reminiscent of the squeaking of bats, and were clad in outfits covered in what appeared to be scales, as far as he could see. After their cursory look at the interior of the cabin, the parrot-men walked away, chattering among themselves.

After making sure they were gone, the driver stirred his companion and started the truck. He drove back to San Juan at once, reaching the city of Bayamón and dropping off the delivery truck at the company office. The driver returned home, and according to Sebastian Robiou, told his family that something very strange had happened to him. He immediately developed physical symptoms, including a high fever and headaches that afflicted him for two days (this brings to mind John Keel’s observation in The Mothman Prophecies (p.231) that UFO witnesses often come down with physical symptoms after encounters—some of them even similar to those of gonorrhea). The witness described feeling a sensation of cranial pressure as he looked at the parrot-men. “I felt my head was going to explode.”

The sensation of cranial pressure during an encounter with a non-human presence was also mentioned in another case that same year: the December 23, 1973 CE-III involving a humanoid with hollow black eyesockets and a housewife hanging laundry in Puerto Rico’s Barrio Limón in the city of Mayaguez. The case became famous as the first time that a hypnotic regression – carried out by Dr. Manuel Mendez del Toro -- was used on a UFO percipient on the island. The housewife chose to remain anonymous, but a transcript of the regression session was featured prominently in Sebastián Robiou’s works and later works by other major Puerto Rican researchers. It was also featured prominently in Contactos Extraterrestres magazine (1981). The case was also discussed on the airwaves, having been featured on Orlando Rimax's Otros Mundos radio show in 1976.

The witness, as stated earlier, was outside her home hanging the laundry when she became aware of a flash in the sky: an object she would describe as a smooth, silver hoop lacking windows or doors, was suspended in the air, tilting from side to side. Not particularly interested in such matters, and with more chores on her list, the housewife returned indoors. Within the walls of her home, she was assaulted by an intense buzzing sound that rose incrementally to the point that she felt that her head was going to explode – the same description offered by the truck driver who encountered the Arecibo “parrot-men”.

Compelled to walk toward one of the windows facing her back yard, the woman found herself staring at a human figure. Most of the details of her experience were recovered under hypnosis two years lager, including her description of “a tall humanoid figure with crossed arms, wearing a tight silver outfit, whose red face was the only part of the body not covered by the uniform.” Lacking a nose or mouth, the entity’s most prominent facial feature were the large, dark cavities where its eyes would have been.

Under Mendez del Toro’s guidance, the anonymous housewife also remembered “crying and screaming in fear, the entity commanded her to calm down and to come to him. Adding to the high-strangeness quotient, the entity demanded that the terrified woman give him an object: a stone she used to mash vegetables. In terror – and the transcript of the hypnotic session demonstrates this clearly – the woman proferred the stone, with the unexpected result that the bizarre entity recoiled from it, ordering her “not to look at him”.

What makes this bizarre 1973 case even stranger – as if it needed to be – is that the eyeless entity projected words into the witness’s mind, words that she understood as “cerakia ovint” and which were subjected to interpretation in a variety of languages, ancient and modern, without any results. Research conducted in 1975 by William Santana of the defunct CEOVNI organization showed that other neighbors had heard the buzzing sound at the time, but hadn’t seen the outlandish visitor from elsewhere.

In July 1977, Adrián Olmos, 42, became the protagonist of an incident that has been picked up in a number of UFO magazines and encyclopaedias -- an encounter near Quebradillas, P.R. with a strange, jetpack-equipped alien measuring less than four feet in height. However, little or no attention was paid to the highly disturbing follow-up to the Olmos experience.

In the event’s aftermath, Olmos had developed an uncharacteristic interest for the paranormal along with uncanny mediumistic faculties. While others may have been hesitant to relive an encounter with the unknown, Olmos made it publicly known that he would welcome a chance to see the strange creatures once again, since he would no longer feel so nervous the second time around. Perhaps someone should have advised him at that point to keep his wishes in check.

On October 20, 1977, Olmos, who worked as a distributor of veterinary medicine products throughout the towns in the islands interior, had largely forgotten the weirdness and excitement of his summertime encounter. While making a delivery near the town of Camuy on the island’s Atlantic coastline, Olmos began to hear strange squealing sounds that he at first thought came from his car, but then realized to his horror that they came from within his head.

“The sound was reminiscent of the shrieking of monkeys.” Olmos told a reporter. “I could feel the dreadful noise within my head as my heartbeats increased. This lasted for about five minutes, after which I continued making the scheduled deliveries on my route.”

But as soon as he had finished his next appointment, the shrieks returned with renewed intensity, giving him the impression that a record was being played at a furiously high speed (similar sounds have been reported in other UFO cases around the world). Olmos began experiencing a throbbing headache of such intensity that he began to fear for his sanity: the pain was accompanied by an inundating sensation of heat throughout his body. So overwhelming was the sensation that it forced the sick and frightened Olmos to pull over on the roadside and check to see if the car’s roof was on fire. At that point, as the shrieking within his head threatened to render him unconscious, Olmos noticed an enormous ball of light, thirteen feet in diameter, blocking the road ahead of him. He described the phenomenon as being composed of myriad hot, smaller lights.

“The lights gave off a sort of gas which coalesced into two small creatures, becoming more and more clearly defined. I realized that the pair were the source of the shrieks, and they appeared to be talking to one another.” Olmos continued. “The creatures had apple-colored faces and were dressed in platinum-white outfits, with diamond-like structures on the foreheads, held in place by black headbands. They resembled lizards, and long red tongues could be seen inside their mouths when they spoke.”

Despite his fear, Olmos was able to make an unusually detailed verbal portrait of the creatures. He noticed that both lizard-like beings had similar features, had four-fingered hands, and wore small boots made of an unknown cloth. One of them held a box in its hands, which Olmos felt was being used to monitor him. Gathering up courage in the face of an unknown situation, the sales representative challenged the creatures, demanding to know what they wanted of him. The creatures turned to him and shrieked, “as if wanting to explain something,” but they were quickly enveloped in a cloudiness caused by the lights and disappeared. The thirteen-foot wide light rose into the sky and eventually vanished from sight.

“I remained petrified,” Olmos added in his interview. “and started to pray. Once composed, I got back in the car and went home. I felt dazed and my body ached all over.”

Olmos’s life was never the same after the bizarre encounter in Camuy. He sold his house in Quebradillas (where he had witnessed the original incident) and moved to a smaller community. Olmos became prone to constant panic attacks and his wife attributed the changes in their household to satanic presences and barred her home to UFO researchers and journalists. Curiously enough, the percipient redoubled his interest in UFOs and the paranormal.

At this point it should be mentioned that these cases were looked into by a group of inquisitive minds that constituted the “UFO scene” of the time. The late Carlos Busquets, for example, was interested in the parapsychological aspects of humanoid encounters, everything from telepathic communication with putative non-humans to the sudden development of limited extra-sensory powers in experiencers, and poltergeist phenomena being reported in the wake of UFO sightings or encounters. Noel Rigau, an engineer, openly acknowledged as the father of Ufology on the island and a “researcher’s researcher” whose indefatigable work became the mainstay of Sebastián Robiou’s writings. William Santana of CEOVNI, an architect, mentioned earlier, provided the analytical angle to cases, while Salvador Freixedo expounded on the role of religion and belief as a whole in the subject of UFOs, developing the building blocks to what would become his landmark Defendámonos de los dioses (Beware of the Gods).

Cases involving non-humans would dwindle in the 1980s until the appearance of the “Greys” in the island’s case histories after 1987, when a new generation of researchers and writers would bring the bewildering stories of experiences into the public light once more.

Argentina: An Encounter at Tres Lagos (2009)

Greetings. My name is Pablo and I’m writing to tell you of a UFO sighting that took place on 17 January 2009 along National Route 40.

I was vacationing in the city of El Calafate, a tourist destination in Patagonia known for its natural beauty. I live in the town of Gobernador Gregores, the provincial capital of Santa Cruz, some 200 kilometers distant from Puerto San Julián and Comandante Piedra Buena, and some 440 kilometers from the provincial capital of Rio Gallegos. I’m stating this so that you can place yourselves on the map.

And this was our sighting: on 17 January at 5:00 a.m I was heading out of El Calafate toward Gdor. Gregores, a 380 kilometer distance, along Route 11 and then some 32 kilometers along National Route 40 toward Tres Lagos, where a fueling stop is mandatory. We reached this location at 6:50 a.m., starting the journey once more at 7:00 a.m. We had covered approximately 4 kilometers when we began to see on our left, on the Cordilleran side, a shining form that was closing in on us very slowly. At 7:15 a.m. we thought it might be an Australian tank (water storage tank) or something similar, but we progressed, it became closer still.

It was at that point that I asked my partner what she was seeing, and she told me it was a bird. We kept driving, and the object was no longer anything resembling a tank or much less a bird. In a matter of minutes it was near us, and that’s when we realized it was nothing known to us at all. The object was aluminum-colored and it was shaped like a cigar. It had neither windows nor wings nor turbines, made no strange noises or smells. This was a truly unique thing for us, since never in our lives had we seen anything similar, nor did we believe in these devices.

In the end, the UFO flew in front of us at a distance of approximately 150 meters, at low altitude and speed – I figure at 70 kph – passing through the middle of a plain and losing itself in some very small hills found at that location.

The cigar-shaped object we saw had the size of a three four-door sedans with trunks. It shined intensely when the sun hit it and was opaque when it did not. This experience was truly incredible.

Friends of the unknown, I ask for your assistance in helping us study, if at all possible, the wave of sightings we are experiencing in this region, since sightings of paranormal things are common in this area, particularly along this road. This isn’t the first time it has happened. There are many witnesses to this phenomenon in the area. I think there must be a cosmic route that enables them to gain access to large water sources, etc. Let us not forget that the Cordillera has great natural and mineral wealth. If you are interested, I can mark the spot and aid you in studying this phenomenon, whose origin I’m convinced we will know very soon.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Electromagnetic Effects: CE-IIs

Electromagnetic Mysteries: CE-IIsBy Scott Corrales

In 1972, astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek created a classification system that while not widely mentioned these days, remains the general rule-of-thumb that governs descriptions of unidentified flying objects and attendant phenomena. This “taxonomy” constituted the backbone of Hynek’s landmark The UFO Experience: A Scientific Enquiry (NY: Ballantine, 1974), in which the author had the following to say about close encounters of the second kind: “The physical effects reportedly include tangible marks on the ground that can remain in evidence for days or even months, and come ostensibly from physical contact of the craft with the ground, scorching or blighting of things (particularly plants and trees), discomfort to animals as evidenced by their behavior, and such physical effects on the human observer as temporary paralysis, numbness , a feeling of heat and other discomfort.”

UFO historian Jerome Clark, on approaching the subject of CE-II’s decades later, has the following to say in his The UFO Book (Visible Ink, 1997):” By their nature, CE-IIs ought to be the most important of all UFO cases," (p.83) given the fact that the physical traces left behind by putative alien craft may actually lead to a better understanding--if not prove--the phenomenon's existence and origin.” Overshadowed by more compelling accounts of alien contact and abduction, CE-IIs have been relegated to "supporting actor" status and have played a minor role throughout the 1990s and into the first decade of the 2000s.

A notable – and overlooked – CE-II occurred in the city of Poza Rica, Veracruz, on 22 May 1992 and involved multiple witnesses (a detail of particular importance in a field in which “one witness is no witness at all”, or so it is argued): a teacher and the twenty children that excitedly made her aware of the situation.

Second grade instructor Zita Azuaria described the case to reporters from the Mexican tabloid INSOLITO, who covered the event. She indicated that it was a very warm, sunny day and that the time was 10:30 a.m., when all the children were enjoying recess by playing in the school's basketball court. According to Ms. Azuaria, a number of children soon approached her, claiming to have seen a bright flash produced by what they held to be a spacecraft.

"The children were telling me: "Maestra, it's a flying saucer!" but I paid them no attention. They came to find me at least two or three times and event then I paid them no attention. It wasn't until eleven o'clock, when we were heading back to the classroom, that I noticed all of them looking skyward. Once inside the room, I started assigning work, but noticed that a few students were missing."

Upon asking their whereabouts, Ms. Azuara was told by the other children that they were outside looking at the flying saucer. Intrigued, she decided to take a look for herself, followed by the students.

"It wasn't saucer-shaped," she told journalists. It resembled a wall-like structure, like a highly polished mirror, at least three meters tall. It was at least three kilometers away from our location, and there are small hills and a lot of vegetation in between."

Ms. Azuara detailed some of the children to inform one of her colleagues to witness the event. When the colleague arrived, the scintillating structure wobbled and appeared to have been sucked into the ground. It emerged once more to everyone's amazement, and then vanished into the ground once more. "Later that afternoon," she continued. "the authorities phoned me at home and asked me to retell my experience for the record. I insisted that it may have been nothing at all anomalous, but an experiment of some sort that was being conducted."

A number of strange circles were found on the soil at a nearby ranch known as "El Edén", which lasted eight days before being engulfed by the local vegetation. Ms. Azuara believed that the circles had been produced by the strange, shining object that her students had seen on May 22nd. Visiting the ranch personally, she complained of feeing a strange sensation within her body, leading her to suspect that there might have been some form of residual radiation in the area that no one had bothered to check. Other visitors to the ranch had indicated that the stones within the scorched circles appear to have melted and bubbled, as would a piece of metal heated to its melting point in a furnace.

Another multiple witness event sure to satisfy even the most conservative researchers occurred on October 7, 1993, when hundreds of people attending a fair honoring of St. Francis in the city of Pachuca, state of Hidalgo, were stunned to see a massive fireball streaming across the skies headed in a southerly direction. A group of musicians who were among the entertainers present at the event indicated that they had seen similar fireballs in the town of Valle del Mezquital, not far from the ruins of Tula. The musicians added that after the event, imprints allegedly made by the "landing gear" of a strange device were discovered.

Carried by the Light

This account takes us from Mexico to the Southern Hemisphere--namely Tandil, Argentina--where UFO activity restarted in earnest in early 2000, attracting national and international attention.

On Tuesday, May 9, 2000, Hugo Macías, 60, faced the task he had been performing--some might say heroically--for the past 37 years: delivering the city of Mar del Plata's La Capital newspaper to a number of locations along national highway 226. As he woke up in the pre-dawn hours to do his job, Macías began his paper route at the Gendarmería Nacional (national police force) building in Puerta del Abra on the road between Tandil and Mar del Plata. After dropping off copies of the paper, Macías drove on for a quarter of a mile when he felt a loud, unusual sound approaching him from behind. He stated that a cylinder of light "encircled" his vehicle, and placed the light's diameter at some 50 meters (160 feet). The unknown beam of energy "seemed to pierce the rooftop", according to the deliveryman.

At that point, explained Macías to an interviewer from the Diario de Tandil newspaper, his car radio inexplicably shut off, with the vehicle's engine and headlights following suit. Despite the engine shutdown, the cone of light transported the car an estimated 600 meters (1700 ft.) before abruptly disappearing and leaving the automobile by the roadside. "Everything came back to life," stated Macías, referring to his vehicle's electrical system, "and I found myself staring into a dark but starry night. In the sky above, [at an altitude] of some two thousand meters (6000 ft.). I could see a cylinder-shaped light heading toward a nearby mountain range...the whole ordeal lasted a matter of seconds, but they seemed endless. There were no other vehicles on the road that night: I may have passed two cars during the remainder of the trip."

Macías retold his experience to a group of friends and an Army officer. The duty officer at the Gendarmerie building later advised him that similar phenomena had been seen "five or six times" and that a burned circular shape had been found in a nearby prairie.

But the deliveryman was also made privy to a highly intriguing piece of information that appears to be a constant factor in Latin American UFO cases. The Gendarmerie, he was told by a local sheriff, discourages talk of UFOs out of a fear that stories "will attract NASA's attention, a fact which creates disturbances [given the fact] that NASA has an airplane with six scientists and an all-terrain vehicle which can go anywhere in the world to inspect different sites...many locals are troubled by the presence of such strangers." Stories of official-looking foreigners flashing NASA credentials and in clearly marked vehicles constitute a common experience in UFO cases from Mexico to Puerto Rico to the Southern Cone. Does the great esteem in which the U.S. space program is held outside the country represent a perfect cover for military or governmental investigators?

Hugo Macías cherished his brush with the unknown, and was proud of "having the satisfaction of having been contacted by something which many researchers would like to see and yet never have." His only complaints in the wake of the CE-2 were of a physical nature: while he felt no bodily effects at the moment of the incident, he came down with a migraine, laryngitis and a number of other ailments two days later. Such side effects have been reported in cases around the world: during a wave of "boomerang"-shaped saucers in Pennsylvania and western New York (1994), many eyewitnesses complained of similar physical maladies (cold or flu-like symptoms).

Out of Control in the Snow

Our friends at Grupo G.A.B.I.E. have submitted another fascinating account of strange events in Argentina – this time involving a electromagnetic phenomenon that could be construed as a CE-2 were it not for the absence of any discernible unidentified object or anomaly. Suffice it to say that Patagonia has always been a prime locale for high strangeness events and this is clearly one of them. The event occurred on 13 July 1988 in one of the southernmost communities on the South American landmass: Ushuaia, in the Argentinean province of Tierra del Fuego

While aboard Frigate Q-2 (ARA Libertad), a vessel employed in training Marines for the Argentinean Navy, Ocampo suffered injuries that would trouble him for the rest of his life, leaving him unable to use his left leg and hip and forcing him to walk in crutches. Since that time – the mid-1980s – he has lived in Usuaia, Tierra del Fuego, where he runs a food and beverage establishment on 25 de Mayo street.

In spite of his injuries, he was able to acquire a vehicle in neighboring Chile that was customized to his needs, allowing him to get around. During a particular morning in 1998, Mr. Ocampo boarded his vehicle to head to his business.

It was around seven o’clock in the morning when he drove along a snow-covered road, lined by many trees native to the area. He remembers listening to a local station when it dawned on him that he had forgotten his eyeglasses back home. He turned around and embarked upon the return journey – a distance of approximately 15 blocks – along open snowfields at the edge of the Olivia River.

At some point during the return trip, the radio suddenly went silent, just as the car made a sudden stop. Ocampo tried to re-start the car but obtained no response whatsoever. When he tried to use his cellphone, he found it was also out of order.

He tried starting the car repeatedly, wondering what was going on, until he finally succeeded. The radio died again, but the car remained in motion – only its driver had no control over the vehicle. The brakes and steering were inoperable, and it wasn’t long before the vehicle left the road, as if guided by an invisible force. It plowed through a snowfield until it came to rest before a stand of cypress trees. Ocampo experienced injuries as a result of this and was rescued by a passing motorist. A tow truck eventually pulled out his car.

A series of stunning discoveries were made when the vehicle was inspected at a mechanic shop the next day: the car’s battery had melted along with the entire electrical system. The instrument panel had been ruined as well. Not a single electrical device was salvageable. The battery of Ocampo’s cellphone – which had refused to operate the day before – refused to take a charge and was also declared ruined.

“We believe that several things are described in this report,” states Grupo G.A.B.I.E.’s report. “A clearly electromagnetic manifestation affected the vehicle’s electrical system and all of its devices. The action was directed at Mr. Hugo Ocampo. It should be noted that at no time was another vehicle – 300 meters away from where Ocampo’s vehicle drove off the road – was affected at all.”

UFOs, wrote Professor Hynek, appear to regard cars as creatures to be investigated, and the UFO Enigma contributes the following words of wisdom in this regard: “One remarkable reported physical effect involves interference in electrical circuits, causing engines to cease functioning temporarily, radios to cut out or exhibit uncommon static, car headlights to dim or be extinguished for a short while, and, on occasion, car batteries to overheat and deteriorate rapidly.” One can be almost certain that Mr. Ocampo would have wanted to hear something a bit more reassuring – if only to tell his insurance agent!

Electromagnetic effects on automobiles are not restricted to the Americas, either. In April 1974, a young couple strolling along the beach at Valdelagrana (Cadiz, Spain) noticed a luminous object a few hundred feet in the air and only several hundred feet away as it engaged in a slow descent behind a treeline. Feeling particularly adventurous, the young man and woman ran back to their car and decided to approach the alleged landing site. As they approached, they were rewarded with the sight of a static, luminous object some twenty feet off the ground. The unknown object gave off green and orange flashes from its lower section.

Their sense of adventure gave out at exactly the same moment that their car’s engine shuddered and died. Despite their best efforts, the engine wouldn’t turn over. Fear of the unknown washed over them as the object rose gently into the air, emitting a low, buzzing sound. Determined to drive away from the otherwise desolate location, the couple eventually got the engine to run, but noticing that it operated hesitantly. The battery was nearly drained, and the entire sighting of had lasted less than eight minutes.

Another intriguing Spanish case occurred during the Galician UFO Flap of 1995-1996. Andres Landeira, a resident of Galicia, Spain's northwestern corner, had no idea he was about to become a protagonist of UFO drama when on the night of February 26, 1996 he found that his car was unable to climb the steep hill which led back to his home in the city of Lugo.

The perplexed driver changed gears, but the sedan refused to budge. It was then that Landeira realized that the car was rising into the air. Panicking, he opened the door, hoping to jump to safety from whatever nameless fate awaited him, but he realized he was well over thirty feet in the air. "I held on to the steering wheel with all my might," Landeira would later tell UFO investigator Manuel Carballal, "I forced my back into the driver's seat and thought I was going to die, being taken to God knows where...Hell! I was really scared."

But the car was not spirited off into the black skies. Landeira observed that whatever had picked him up deposited him back onto the road just slightly ahead of his original position, but sideways. Aside from being badly frightened by the experience, the driver wasn't negatively affected. The only reminder of the event was the car's dashboard clock, which froze at precisely ten minutes before two o'clock in the morning.

Electromagnetic Effects in the Caribbean

Puerto Rican UFO researcher Sebastián Robiou, the tireless documenter of the UFO activity that overwhelmed the Spanish-speaking Caribbean in the early 1970s, looked into an alleged case of electromagnetic interference from an unknown source in his book Manifiesto OVNI.

In August 1973, a young man by the name of Antonio Jusin, driving a standard shift 1963 Impala, had no idea that he was about to entered in the annals of ufology. It was a Friday evening, shortly before midnight, and Jusin and a friend had set out from the town of Sabana Grande to Maricao in the southwestern corner of Puerto Rico – one of its most active areas for all manner of anomalies.

Driving his oversized car along the narrow mountain roads, Jusin noticed a light hovering over a nearby mountaintop. He made a comment to his friend, who dismissed it as a “beacon”. Wending their way through the mountains, they saw the object again – this time larger than before. Startled by the sight, Jusin put the car into second gear...but the Impala stalled. Its driver was unable to make it go backward or forward.

Something prompted the alarmed driver to turn on his high beams, and the unknown light responded with a blast of light that turned night into day for at least a mile around, according to Jusin. The object advanced until it hovered directly over the Impala and its now-terrified occupants, descending. Nearly blinded by the light, Jusin was nonetheless able to see that his car’s electrical system had died out – no lights, no radio. His friend struggled to keep him from abandoning the car and running for cover in the vegetation. Both men agreed to put the car in neutral and coast downhill to the nearest house; along the road, a friendly motorist in a Jeep offered to tow the stricken car back home.

“Upon arriving,” Jusin told Robiou during an interview held in May 1976, “I opened the hood and saw that the battery had melted down to chewing gum, a rubbery mess. It was completely melted. I could also tell that the wiring was burned, completely charred. The lighting system was damaged. The starter was no good; the alternator, the horn, nothing. Neither the radio nor the tape player worked, or the clocks. That object ruined everything.”

Monday, January 16, 2012

Argentina: More on the Luis Sánchez Case (Tucumán)

Last week we shared the experiences of contactee Luis Sanchez with INEXPLICATA readers in the article “Argentina: A High Strangeness Event from 1986” and promised to follow up with any developments. Mr. Sanchez has since contacted Grupo G.A.B.I.E with again with not one, but two experiences that he has associated with the UFO phenomenon. We submit them for your consideration.

Mr. Sánchez’s 2nd Incident as told to Grupo G.A.B.I.E

Luis Sánchez, a follower of our website, has sent us this interesting life experience from the Province of Tucumán (San Miguel de Tucumán) that took place on 05 April 1988 – a new experience that he endured and is kindly sharing with us. As always, we request that reports on similar sightings in the area be sent to our e-mail address:

”This event took place on a night in April. It was my twelfth birthday, 05/04/1988. A summer day, very warm in Tucumán, following an afternoon in which my late grandmother indulged me with soda and a meringue pie of the kind I liked so much. I decided to go out at around 22:30 hours. In those days you could leave your house at that time, it wasn’t as dangerous as it is now. The sky was starry, lovely, with clear skies.

“I got on the new bike my dad had bought me. I remember that I couldn’t ride it, since it was larger than the old one. They were sitting by the doorway, and in the end I got on the old bicycle. I only had permission to ride around my block. Go to the corner and turn back.

“Riding around at full speed, upon heading home I could see that only my mother was waiting for me at the door; I figure it was 23:00 hrs. by now. The fact is that I rode up to her and asked, “Mom, please let me do one more round!!” She agreed and I reached the corner of my block.

“Everyone was asleep by now. I braked and looked heavenward to give thanks for such a great day, and I saw something that my brain interpreted as the Moon. But within seconds – since I was always a great observer – my mind told me it wasn’t the Moon.

“First of all because it was within the atmosphere – one could see that it flew, and stranger still was the fact that the object was enveloped in a white cloud, forming a halo of smoke. It moved, it wasn’t still. It didn’t zigzag...it was heading from east to west, judging from where I stood.

“It was a halo of smoke that lost its shape, much like the smoke rings people blow when they puff a cigarette. But this one didn’t come apart. I pursued it, and it moved even faster. I looked inside the halo, and it gave me the most astonishing pause I’d ever thought I’d experience.

“The object was like this: on the outside it was like a halo of white smoke, like a cloud, but on the inside it was a dark circle (looking at it from below, as I was), and it covered the stars as it moved across my line of sight. Something round inside the halo was being camouflaged. There was a disk in there. As it moved, it blocked out the stars.

“It was so fascinating that I followed it, shouting: “Mom! Mom! Come quickly!”

“She came over, and I said, look at that. She was confused as I was at first, as if that thing had been designed to stump the human brain. She said it was the Moon.

“Then I said: “Mom! The Moon doesn’t move like that, look at it again, the Moon’s over there!” and I pointed at the Moon that we all know, adding: “This thing with smoke around it isn’t the Moon, it’s black on the inside!”

“She said: “You’re right. What is it?” I replied that I didn’t know, and that I was going to follow it, pedaling away joyfully at full speed.

“The object vanished quickly toward the west, toward a wooded area. And the truth is that I wasn’t going to reach it on a bicycle. So I turned back and we went to bed. We never spoke about it again, and my mother never granted much importance to things like that.

“It always made me wonder. Perhaps I’ll never know what it was. But it was a real UFO to me.”

Mr. Sánchez’s 3rd Incident as told to Grupo G.A.B.I.E

“It was a New Year celebration – and according to some, it was the end of the world.

“There was much talk about the infamous Y2K error. A computer error which, upon the arrival of the year 2000, would caused computers to seize up due to programs that had not been updated, causing all systems to collapse. Others felt that certain prophecies would come true and everything would come to an end.

“That evening, we stopped at a friend’s house on the way from my home with my companion Sonia. She’s from Caballito and came to live here in Tucumán. They offered us everything. I don’t drink liquor, neither does she. We had something to eat, sat down and chatted with our friends. Some got up to the table to drink soda.

“I remained in the armchair on the outside patio, alone, while they continued talking tableside. It was 0200 hours.

“Suddenly, I felt ill, strange, odd, with the powerful sensation of being watched by someone. I looked sideways and there was no one. I looked ahead and was somewhat stunned, shall we say. My mind felt that that there was a strong connection, and I looked skyward.

“It was a beautiful starry night, but...I stared fixedly at a star, as though being watched from it. It was a like a telepathic connection. I only pointed at the star, felt they were watching me for some seven seconds. That’s when that “something” – a craft or whatever – realized it had been discovered. Then the unexpected happened.

“The bright star began to move, making long, slow circles, gaining speed in a corkscrew-like shape into outer space. I never took my eyes off it. I saw how it gained unimaginable speed, following the corkscrew-like motion, until it became lost from sight. It never stopped looking like a star. The farther it went away, the smaller it became.

“From that day onward, it confirmed everything I believed: that something or someone is watching us. There’s something in space. That thing was a CRAFT. Something non-terrestrial.”

Puerto Rico: New UFO Program

Argentina: Anomalous Object at Tres Arroyos (Barrio El Molino)

Source: Planeta UFO and LU24Date: 01.15.2012

Argentina: Anomalous Object at Tres Arroyos (Barro El Molino)

A resident of Barrio El Molino approached LU24 (the Tres Arroyos radio station -- http://www.radiotresarroyos.com/) to consult about a photograph showing a luminous object in the skies of Tres Arroyos, which he had the chance to capture as he headed out of his home on January 1, 2012.

Jorge Omar D'Alessandro says that "around 20:25 hours, setting out with my wife for a stroll, I was able to see a luminous object in the sky toward the southwest which seemed odd to me. It was self-luminous and there were shadows above and below it. As it went away, it lost altitude, or at least it seemed so to me."

The map shows the location of the cities of Necochea and Tres Arroyos in the Province of Buenos Aires - places where the presence of the UFO phenomenon has been reported in recent days.

Argentina: A UFO Over Suipacha

Hugo Pelatti, a follower of our blog, kindly sent us a series of photos obtained in the city of Suipacha, Province of Buenos Aires, on 24 December 2011. We thank Hugo for submitting his photos and replying to our questions.

Details: Description of the circumstances under which the photos were taken.

“...all photos were taken with the same Nikon Coolplix L1 camera. All photos were taken on 24 December 2011 between 16:30 and 17:00 hours. And as I told you, neither me nor my wife noticed anything at the time the photos were taken. We only became aware of it upon uploading the photos to our computer to view them.

“We were returning from Luján on the way toward 9 de Julio and since we had time and it was still early, we decided to go into Suipacha to take some photos (it’s our hobby).”

We received several images, selecting two for analysis:

The following photograph shows a diffuse object that perfectly shows the transit of a UFO. Following analysis and comparison, we reached the conclusion that it was possibly an insect flying by at the moment the photograph was taken. The camera is unable to focus on it and captures a blurred object. In this case it is a “Blurfo”.

Quite the contrary occurs with the next photo.We can see a UFO, an object that we were unable to identify with anything known. It is not a known terrestrial craft, not a meteorological phenomenon and does not correspond to an astronomical phenomenon.

After subjecting them to a variety of filters – some shown in the analysis – we reached the conclusion that it is an object of considerable energy and very little mass, showing a very well-defined core. The object appears to be static.

As is customary in all our investigations, please point out any corrections or constructive opinions. If you recognize it as something natural, please advise us of the fact.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

High Strangeness: Earth's Shadow Denizens

High Strangeness: Earth's Shadow DenizensBy Scott Corrales(c) 2012

On the last day of the year in 1968, an uncle and nephew were driving from the town of Isabela on the island’s north shore to a family get-together in San Juan, and were in very high spirits. They did not know, however, that their otherwise routine journey would become a landmark case in UFO history.

At seven thirty in the evening, both men had reached the city of Vega Baja when their car’s headlights lit up an object on the roadside. Thinking it was a motorist in distress, they slowed down, only to realize that the car was no car, and the figure standing outside was not an unlucky driver on New Year’s Eve: a small entity was standing right next to a light colored object that rose from the ground exactly as both men reacted in alarm. According to the nephew’s description, the diminutive figure had shining eyes “like a cat”, and that it reacted with the same degree of surprise that he and his uncle had experienced. Neither party expected to come across the other, it would seem, on a holiday evening.

While this event is generally acknowledged to be the first UFO landing case in Puerto Rico, incidents involving small humanoids reach back into the island’s history, and are quite common in the lore of the Caribbean and the countries of Mesoamerica and South America.

The “contemporary age” of the UFO phenomenon hadn’t even started when Luis Villafañe was a boy living in the town of Utuado in the mountainous heartland of Puerto Rico. But one morning in 1946, while his mother cooked dinner, Luis saw a small creature, some three feet in height, approach the door to his house. He recalls that the enigmatic being wore coveralls of a brownish hue, had large black eyes, and long fingers that reached down to its knees.

When he alerted his mother and siblings to the unusual presence, they were gripped by a sudden paralysis: the diminutive being regarded them for what seemed to be an eternity before dashing off at high speed into the dense tropical vegetation.

Villafañe states that his mother gave both him and his brothers "a sound whupping", believing that their childish pranks had attracted the attention of un duende--an elf.

A Persistent Belief

Beings of diminutive stature were not confined to the tropics, either: the native Americans living in what is now Connecticut believed in the Makiawisag, who would come into people's houses demanding food. If their demands were not met, these dwarfs would point their fingers and immobilize their targets, proceeding to ransack homes. An antiquarian, F.G. Speck, gathered such stories for presentation in a formal paper.

And the cases go on and on, from one country to another and spanning the centuries. That societies around the globe believe in impish creatures that can be good or bad, if not both, is certainly not new. The connection between these "little people" of human tradition and the UFO phenomenon has been the subject of many authoritative works, Jacques Vallée's Dimensions among them. In our times of saucer-flying "greys" this could hardly be something new, but the fact of the matter is that diminutive hominid creatures continue to appear throughout the world, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean, much in the same way as they did centuries ago.

In the Chiapas region of Mexico we find the chaneques, which are widespread in this jungle region south of the Yucatan. An investigator who spent some time in that part of the country spoke to a number of shy peasant girls, who described how the creatures, standing no taller than a hand, would have a good time playing in the water basin behind their homes: the elusive beings would cause the crockery left to soak in the basin to rattle. The chaneques were aquatic beings, swimming in and out of the basin through its drainpipe. It is also worth remembering that the ancient Mayan ruins of Uxmal, which are in the area, were founded, in legend, by a dwarf born to a witch. The jungles of Central America and the desertic coastal plains of Perú and Chile contain the ruins of structures which could have only served the purposes of diminutive creatures. The aluxoob or “aluches” of the Yucatan Peninsula are considered downright beneficial to the small farmer working his milpa in the water-scarce Yucatan, but others have declared the supposedly mythical entities an outright menace. Tradition describes them as the ultimate pranksters, given to pushing people out of hammocks at night (a very anti-social thing to do), throw rocks against structures and people in the dark of the night, and tormenting dogs, which they hate. The aluxoob can inflict illness, usually in the form of high fevers which are hard to abate. The Mayan farmer who is wise enough to have not forsaken the lore of his forefathers will take care of these entities much in the same way that their Celtic counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic did--by leaving small gifts of food outdoors at night as a peace offering. This will turn the Aluxoob from disagreeable to outright helpful, looking over the farmers crops and home, and even harassing burglars.

The study of elves, fairies and their kin leaped out of the pages of childrens' books and the oral traditions of rural folk into the realm of scientific study in the late 1800s, when Walter Evans-Wentz, who received the first doctorate in comparative religion, published The Fairy Faith in Celtic Country. On the other side of the Atlantic, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Augusta Gregory delved into the study of the elusive elves and fairies. Conan Doyle would often go to France to discuss the subject with astronomer/spiritist Camille Flammarion.

The descriptions provided by those who were witnesses to the arrival of small "spacemen" during the early days of the UFO phenomenon reawakened interest in the possibility that dwarfish "aliens" could merely be the creatures we called elves or fairies under a different guise.

What evidence we have that this could be the case is even less than circumstantial, but the testimonies continue to surface: In May of 1991, a few boys in the coastal town of Medianía Alta, P.R., attempted the capture of a "a little green man" during a crab-hunting expedition. Two of the boys indicated that they had chased the green creature until it disappeared into a sewer hole. The boys followed, but their quarry was gone. The creature was described as having "ugly red eyes, a pointy head like an ear of corn, equally pointed ears and thin long arms". One of the boys, Wilhelm Cordero, stated that the creature made sibilant noises and grabbed his arm. That action caused the boys to panic and run away. Other residents of the community had isolated encounters with the tiny "elf", which corroborated the boys' tale. The diminutive creature went as far as attempting to make contact with a child at the local kindergarten.

While advocates of the nuts-and-bolts origin of UFOs lend no credence at all to these reports, the fairy theory, as proposed by a number of authors, might possibly account for incidents involving "missing time" (a component of almost all the traditional fairy stories) and the strange foods and beverages given to abductees (such as the emerald-colored draught given to the Brazilian soldier José Antonio by the dwarves who captured him in a 1969 case). It has also been suggested that the UFO phenomenon as a whole is but an extension of traditional fairy mythology.

Some of these cases involving dwarfish beings border the unreal. In his book Ellos: Los dueños invisibles de este mundo, Spanish investigator Salvador Freixedo discusses the case of "Julio", a man known to him and living in Puerto Rico, whose life has been made a living hell by "imps".

According to the version appearing in Frexiedo’s book, “Julio”, a contactee since childhood, entered a landed UFO where he engaged in play with a human-looking girl. Before leaving, the girl gave him a present (the mythical overtones become evident) that would change his life: a box that produced ugly, simian little creatures, who would appear suddenly and disappear on command. The boy accepted this "fairy gift" and embarked on a path of ruin: he soon discovered that he was unable to put the imps back into their box (or, as the author suggests, the device which summoned them from their dimension into ours). The imps would then run away in a flash, disappearing into the wooded area in which he lived.

Over the years, Julio summoned well over fifty of these creatures to amuse friends and neighbors, some of whom still recall the initial fright they received from the imps. The story becomes even more mind-bending. Julio soon discovered that the imps, unable to return to their "box", turned against him, spying on him from the brush and racing up to touch him when he was outdoors. In his conversations with Freixedo, Julio stated a belief that many of the tragedies that had taken place in his rural area were produced by the imps. He believes that they still lurk to this day in a mountainous region in which he had hidden the box prior to destroying it. A number of unexplained deaths had occured in that vicinity.

In the late 1990s, Freixedo’s wife – Magdalena del Amo-Freixedo – reopened the case and provided some new insight into this high-strangeness event. “Julio” turned out to be Juan Rivera Feliberti, the son of a well-to-do landowner in western Puerto Rico. In 1929, when Feliberti was only nine years old, he decided to build a kite – seen as a rite of passage in those bygone days – and was testing his new contraption when he noticed the kite had become stuck to “something”, and the guideliene was perfectly stiff. “That thing was really big,” Feliberti told the researcher. “It gave off a lot of sparks and was very round. I couldn’t compare it to anything. That’s when they pulled me up to that place.”

According to his own testimony, an unknown force drew him up to the object – not merely to its exterior, but actuall through its seemingly solid surface. The nine-year-old found himself in an unknown environment, scanning the unfamiliar surroundings with more than a touch of trepidation. It was at this point that the original version of the “Julio” narrative dovetails with the new information obtained by Magdalena del Amo: standing before young Feliberti was a girl, who held his kite in her small hands.

“She was slightly shorter than me, like our six-year-old girls, and had bronzed white skin. She held my kite and I was very angry, enough to charge at her and struggle for [the kite], which was mine, but she wouldn’t let go. There was also a very big man, some six feet tall, not fat, but well-built and somewhat blonde. He loooked human, but didn’t do anything. I just wanted my kite back.”

At that point, the young female figure showed him “many toys” that were in her possession, some of them “with colored lights” (certainly not something one would expect to see in rural Puerto Rico in the late 1920s), and asked if he would like to play with her. But the headstrong boy wanted no part of her or the unusual wonders being profferred – just his kite. The girl touched some buttons on a box in front of her and spiral wisps of “smoke” began to form in the air, coalescing into a sort of monkey. She kept producing these creatures, which would then obediently return to their box as wisps of smoke again. The girl asked young Feliberti if he was willing to trade the kite for the object, to which he agreed. The rest of the story played out as in the original “Julio” narrative in Salvador Freixedo’s Ellos.

In September of 1977, Luis Sandoval, who lived on the outskirts of the town of Corozal, Puerto Rico, encountered an improbable creature that would have fit equally well in a modern Ufology book or in a turn of the century fairy text. Sandoval, who lived on a hilltop with his wife, was resting on a neighboring peak one afternoon, taking in a spectacular view ofthe island's northern coast, when he unexpectedly heard a loud report and huge ball of light hurtling down toward him. The light faded away to reveal a little creature with yellowish skin, large black eyes and unpleasant facial features, clad "as if for a wedding" in a grey tuxedo, yellow shirt with a white collar and a green cravat. Its head was covered by a helmet. Sandoval states that the being told him not to be afraid, for it was an "ultraterrestrial being". It then proceeded to check the stunned human's feet, knees and chest with a device resembling a stethoscope. The medical exam continued as the gaily-clad ultraterrestrial auscultated Sandoval's back and placed its hands on his temples and head. When the bizarre exam was over, the being turned around and was once again enveloped in the sphere of light that had brought him there.

The dog that had accompanied Sandoval "howled throughout the incident", a fact which frightened him the most, as he expressed a belief that dogs howl when the dead appear. The animal ran away after the encounter, and was found dead days later by its owner.

Gnomes, dwarves, elves and their cohorts have always been described as wearing colorful garments, and Sandoval's "ultraterrestrial MD" was undoubtedly dressed to kill. In a classic case which took place in Everittstown, NJ in 1957, John Trasco confronted a putty-faced little man who wanted to take his dog. The entity was sternly rebuked ("Get the hell out of here!") and promptly made itself scarce. It was described as wearing "a green suit with shiny buttons, with a green tam-o'-shanter-like cap, and gloves with a shiny object at the tip of each." It vanished in a brilliant egg-shaped object.

Far from Puerto Rico, in the Mexican coastal state of Veracruz, trucker Miguel Angel Garcia, transporting 50 sheets of asbestos and cement, had his own brush with the unknown on May 18, 1973. As he drove along Highway 95 from the towns of La Tinaja to Tierra Blanca, he found a knot of “very small men” standing in the middle of the lanes, flagging him down near the outskirts of the village of Cintalapa.

When he came within a hundred feet of them, he realized that the “small men” weren’t even human, but “chaneques”. The driver then decided to pull over, leave his vehicle, and pursue the small, fleet figures into the woods, coming up emptyhanded. Upon returning to his truck, he found that it was enveloped in blue flames, with even the flame-resistant asbestos burning to ash, according to contemporary newspaper accounts (Mexico’s Novedades tabloid, in June 1973). The losses were estimated at some thirty-five thousand US Dollars.

The Mexico Leyendas website (www.mexicoleyendas.com) includes a verbatim account by the confused truck driver: “I was driving along Kilometer 18 of the road from La Tinaja to Tierra Blanca, approaching the village of Cintalapa, when I suddenly saw a group of people standing in the middle of the road, and that’s why I slowed down. When they were a short distance from me, I could see that they were very small men, not even the size of a dwarf. They were strangely dressed. They looked like goblins or gnomes that had come out to meet me with their arms in the air. Once I got near them, I stopped the truck. It seems that upon descending from the cab, I startled the little men with my presence. They fled in a rush and became lost in the vegetation.

“After a fruitless search, I decided to return , and you can imagine my surprise when I saw the truck engulfed in gigantic blue flames. Even though I couldn’t feel the heat, the flames devoured the truck and its load, even though what I was hauling was cement and asbestos sheeting.” Some varieties of asbestos are flame-resistant to 5000 centigrade (9000 Fahrenheit) so the reported heatless fire Garcia reported was in itself an episode of high-strangeness.

Are these diminutive creatures in any way related to the UFO phenomenon? There is no clear-cut answer. Some of them have been seen emerging from odd vehicles while in other cases there has been no object present. They clearly predate the vast number of sightings of "Greys" which generally began in the late 70's, and their aims appear to be different from those of the latter. Perhaps we are waging a war on two fronts.

San José (Hilda Miranda – Newsroom). The loud noise resembling that of an explosion was heard by dozens of people around midnight yesterday hitherto lacks any explanation by officialdom.

Neither the National Meteorological Institute (IMN) nor the OVISCORI (Costa Rican Vulcanology Observatory) have any records of a phenomenon that could have been responsible for the loud reverberations.

According to hundreds on the social networks, a powerful report -- lasting more than five minutes – was heard around midnight yesterday.

Reports from readers of La Nación on Facebook suggest that the reverberations were heard in parts of San José and in more remote communities such as Turrialba, San Ramon, Coronado, Heredia, Escazú and others.

According to the IMN, the atmosphere’s behavior in recent hours was normal. “Experts checked the satellite signal and no record of any anomalous situation was found,” stated Mario Sánchez, the agency’s press officer.

Similarly, the Observatorio Vulcanologico y Sismológico de Costa Rica (OVSICORI) informed that there was no record of any strong tremor that could have given rise to the loud buzzing.

Another version that made the rounds held that the explosions were from festivities in the town of Zapote, but the parties in charge of the celebrations dismissed this conjecture.

“The fireworks were normal. We are aware of that noise, but we don’t believe that it has anything to do with the festivities at Zapote, because people heard it in places far from [the community],” said Rafael Arias, an advisor to the San José city hall.

Arias further noted that the closing cannonade was at approximately 9 p.m., but that unauthorized parties discharged a series of “bomblets” around 12 a.m. “But it wasn’t a loud sound either,” he noted.

Some readers also stated that lights in the sky accompanied the loud noise.

Argentina: Seven UFOs Reported Over Resistencia

Strange flashes in the skies over Resistencia attracted the gaze of residents of different sections of the provincial capital, who reported the presence of numerous unidentified flying objects (UFOs) coming out of the south and heading north. The sighting occurred on Thursday noon, when the sun was at its fullest.

Residents of Villa San Martín spread the word so that several would be able to see the seven objects moving through the air unhurriedly, some of them flashing lights.

Availing themselves of the cellphones, some managed to capture images showing small circles in the sky. One of [the witnesses] recounted the episode to NORTE, claiming that it occurred once more yesterday.

While choosing to remain anonymous to avoid being laughed at by those who know him, the young man – who only managed to take a few photos – stated the following: “Along with other residents of Villa San Martin, we saw objects on 5 January, only a few minutes before noon. First there were three. They were triangular in shape and reflected the sun like mirrors. We could see them clearly, since they were flying relatively low and traveled north apparently very slowly. It was later possible to clearly see other similar ones, for a total of seven, moving at the same speed and heading.”

While some of the objects issued a very strong white reflection, at certain moments it was possible to tell that they “were shaped like boomerangs.”

“It all happened very quickly, and amid the astonishment, I was able to take a few photos. Unfortunately, under such conditions, one regrets not having had better equipment to show the objects in detail,” reported a neighbor, who approached us to discuss the events.

The incident was later subjected to comments through social networks in the hopes that other citizens who may have seen the UFOs may make their own remarks, and if possible, contribute new images.

In their own discussions, the local residents dismiss the possibility that the sighting may have been part of meteorological studies, due to the shape of the object. They also explained that they were following a given course and moved at a similar speed, never making any abrupt movements as has been described in many cases. In any event, while some skeptics are to be found, others claim that these are indeed UFOs.

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Mexico: A Fireball over Sinaloa

Local residents reported seeing a fireball in the sky that split into three parts before disappearing.

The phenomenon took place yesterday afternoon, Wednesday 04 January 2012.

Tatiana Kokima and Emiliato Terán, astrophysicists with the State Science Center (Centro de Ciencias del Estado), who form part of the search team, dismissed the possibility that it could be a meteorite given that the Sinaloa's Seismic Network did not pick up any impact.

Accoridng to the Civil Protection agency, it could be "space junk".

On the other hand, NASA confirmed detection of a heavenly body that entered the atmosphere at 18:50 hours on 04 January, and which could have crashed somewhere in the Sierra de Sinaloa on the border with Chihuahua, or in the municipalities of Salvador Alvarado and Mocorito.

Argentina: A High Strangeness Event from 1986

Our friends at Grupo G.A.B.I.E. have shared the following report from the mid-80s that suggests a possible abduction experience or at least a high-strangeness incident that is being made known only now, nearly 30 years later.

"Christmas Eve, surrounded by family and after the celebrrations, time was 02:30 in the morning approximately -- that I'll never forget.

"The Christmas toast went by, people's mood was cheered by celebration - a lovely recollection. I finished launching the rockets that my father would buy for me while they were seated around the table, from beneath a gallery in front of the house. I headed to the door. We always had a large backyard with plants, trees, etc.

"As I stood at the door, I heard a noise, but I thought it was the sound of little bottle rockets. But the sound didn't stop - it was constant, like the sound of a cave with whistling wind or something like it, like a turbine. It was something that buzzed in my ears.

"I looked upward, as the sound came from above, and I saw something. It looked like a car without wheels, slab-shaped (its lower section, which was visible to me, had a rectangle similar to a small door). It also had color. It was a strange color, grey mixed with light blue, clearly visible in the part I could see. It had two lights in the rounded forward section; a light that wasn't painful, but was a beam of straight light. Upon seeing it, I was paralyzed for a brief moment. It was as if they wanted me to see them. I felt connected - and happy.

"It hovered above my house, going from the door to the back, crossing the entire house, at a height over the street light wires, the lamp posts, a slow speed that I can't estimate. It was like an old lady walking, very slow...it was really low, some 15 to 20 meters at least. I ran to the back of the house, since I supposed it would appear there. As I ran, I told my brother Eduardo, age 8, to come with me to see this thing! I was fascinated. He ran with me and we came out to the backyard. We covered approximately 14 meters (45 feet). I looked to the sky, thinking the object would appear.

"After that, I don't remember anything at all.

"That very same night, I woke up in my bed. I was in my room. Right next to the place where waited for the object. The time was around 4 in the morning when I woke up. I went to my mother, and asked her: "Where's Eduardo?" Sleeping, she replied. I never knew what happened. That's all that was left in my mind.

"The next day I asked my brother, and he told me he only saw a light, and remembered nothing else afterward.

"I don't know what happened, but strange events like this began to occur [in my life]. I will tell you more later on."

Let's hope that G.A.B.I.E.'s enigmatic correspondent indeed decides to share his subsequent experiences. We will keep our readers abreast of further developments.

About Me

The Institute of Hispanic Ufology was established in October of 1998 with the appearance of the first issue of Inexplicata. The organization currently has representatives and contributing editors in over a dozen Spanish-speaking countries. Director: Scott Corrales.